Allen keys, the History Mouse, and Year's Best Fantasy

[davidlevine]

I'm in Santa Clara for the annual gay square dance convention. On the way here I had to have part of my baggage hand-searched because the X-ray showed... an allen wrench. But when it turned out to be the little key to reset the combination on a combination lock, they let me keep it. "So," says Kate, "it would have been a problem if it were hexagonal, but it's okay because it's round?"

Do you feel safer?

The convention doesn't start until tomorrow, so today we went to the Winchester Mystery House (or, as I always call it, the Winchester History Mouse). I hadn't expected it to be so intimately surrounded by the same boring malls and office parks that make up the rest of Santa Clara (plus the cool triple-dome movie theatre next door). I was also surprised at the mix of completed, under-construction, and fallen down in disrepair... many perfectly complete rooms adjoined hallways with bare lath and no plaster, and vice versa, while one entire group of 30 rooms was boarded up and never repaired after the 1906 earthquake. A natural consequence, I should have realized, of the building's history of continuous renovation. Another surprise was that Sarah Winchester left no journal or other indication of why she built and built as she did, so the well-known statement that it was to appease, or distract, the ghosts of those slain by the Winchester rifle is only a theory. Maybe it was just a hobby (some people build model trains, some tie flies... Sarah Winchester had a lot of money).

In writing news, Year's Best Fantasy #5, edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer and including my story "Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely," is now available at your local independent bookstore, Powell's, amazon.com, and bn.com. Enjoy!

Comments

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

Woot for you on YBF5. Having both workshopped that story and later rejected it, I suppose it is incumbent on me to now prostrate myself.

:: grovel :: grovel :: grovel ::

Keep up the excellent work, dude.

Winchester History Mouse

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I independently invented that name, you rotter.

Up until a decade or so ago, it was not quite so hemmed in by larger buildings looming over it, and consequently looked bigger itself. In Sarah's day, her housing complex were the only buildings for maybe half a mile in any direction, a proudly majestic cluster of buildings and trees visible over open fields. A bit south on Winchester I think there still is one house with a field around it that gives a faint idea of what those days were like.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Re: Year's Best Fantasy: I don't think I knew about this coup. Congratulations!

[davidlevine]

No groveling necessary. You gave it a fair critique that helped it be a better story, and you rejected it because it wasn't really a Polyphony story.

But that is one disturbing userpic...

[davidlevine]

Thanks! I also got three honorable mentions in Dozois, which I don't think I've mentioned here.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Mazel tov!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

In fact, I first saw Star Wars at that cool triple-dome movie theater.

My favorite thing about the History Mouse is something Hal observed: after Sarah was trapped in a dark room for many hours after the '06 earthquake she seems to have become almost obsessed with natural light. Suddenly, structures look almost post modern in sensibility, because while she retains the Victorian shapes, all of a sudden there's all this glass laid right onto the stark Victorian bones of the roof line in cupolas and peaks and dormers, so that no room or dark is dark or windowless in the newer construction. Parts seem almost like a Victorian greenhouse.

[deedop.livejournal.com]

Schweeeet on the YBF!

I love the history mouse as well. I only wish I'd owned a digital camera back then so I could have taken better piccies. It's gloomy in some of those odd little stairwells.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Oh, Year's Best Schmear's Best. I want to talk about Square Dancing! Did you hear the story on NPR about gay square dancing in Chicago? How did I not know you're into square dancing? Yay!

[urso.livejournal.com]

Don't you go thinking I didn't see ya there! :-)